The transfer market has cemented its place at the heart of football over the years, providing, for some, as much entertainment off the pitch as we see on it. Keeping tabs on where players are moving to during the summer months keeps us football fanatics sane out-of-season and clubs selling and buying individuals is now the lifeblood of the beautiful game.
Some clubs enjoy transfers more than others and it’s certain that we’ve come a long way since the day of William Groves, who broke the transfer record in 1893 when Aston Villa became the first football club to spend over £100 on a player, eight years after professionalism in football had been officially legalised in England.
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Transfer records now linger around and towards the £100 million mark and there have been numerous records broken and re-broken in the 130-year-or-so spell since Groves’ move.
Here’s a look at five of the most influential clubs when it comes to breaking the world transfer record.
#5 FC Barcelona
Although having boasted a golden generation of players over the past decade, including the likes of Lionel Messi, Xavi, Neymar and Thierry Henry, the Catalan club haven’t broken the world transfer record this century. In fact, the last time Barcelona did such a thing was in 1996, when the club signed Brazilian Ronaldo from PSV for just over £13 million; the forward would be sold to Inter Milan a year later for £6 million more.
Apart from that transfer, Barcelona have broken the record on two other occasions, signing Diego Maradona from Boca Juniors in 1982 for a mere £3 million (that would now buy you just over a fifth of Patrick van Aanholt) and Johan Cruyff for £922,000 from Ajax in 1973. That’s certainly not a bad trio of world record signings.
The Spaniards have also previously shattered the record for the most expensive South American transfer of all time when they signed Luis Suarez from Liverpool for £65 million back in 2014.
#4 AC Milan
The first Serie A outfit on a list dominated by Italian clubs, AC Milan are one of Europe’s most decorated teams of all time and there were many an eye-watering transfer fee which fuelled such success, four to be exact. The club’s first ever world-record transfer came in the form of Juan Schiaffino, an Uruguayan they signed from Peñarol in 1954 for the equivalent of £72,000. At the time, Milan were just the third club outside of England to have ever broken the world transfer record.
They have done so another three times since, signing Dutchman Ruud Gullit from PSV in 1987 for a fee of £6 million. Five years later, Italian giants would do it again by adding Frenchman Jean-Pierre Papin to their ranks; he was the first ever player to cost £10 million.
Of AC Milan’s record-breaking signings, the most recent came in 1992 when they snapped up Gianluigi Lentini from Torino for £13 million. The winger would go on to make 60 appearances for the club.
#3 Juventus
In the same year that AC Milan broke the world record transfer fee with Lentini, Juventus had done just the same beforehand when they signed Gianluca Vialli from Sampdoria for £12 million – this being the last time the current Serie A holders broke the transfer record, but their fourth time overall.
Two years prior in 1990 they had achieved the feat when they bought Roberto Baggio from Fiorentina for £8 million, and it was way back in 1968 that they last did it before that, when they purchased Pietro Anastasi from Varese who became the first £500k player.
The first time that Juventus broke the world transfer record was in 1957, signing Enrique Omar Sivori from Argentinian side River Plate for just shy of £100,000. The club also surpassed the record transfer fee paid for a South American player last year when they signed Gonzalo Higuain from Napoli for £75 million, a record they still hold, proving that the Italian giants are renowned for frequently shattering transfer records.
#2 Inter Milan
They may no longer be mixing it with the greats in the Champions League, but Inter Milan are nonetheless a formidable financial side and have broken the world transfer record on four occasions also. The last time the club did so was in 1999, when they brought in Christian Vieri from Lazio for a whopping £32 million.
Just two years prior to that, they achieved the feat by signing the aforementioned Ronaldo from Barcelona for a then record £19.5 million. An indication of how rapidly finance flourishes in football being that Inter’s fee for Ronaldo was almost doubled by their Vieri record two years later.
Inter also signed Dane Harald Nielsen from Bologna in 1967 for a record £300,000 and their first experience of breaking the record came in 1961 when they signed a Spanish Luis Suarez from Barcelona for just over £150,000.
#1 Real Madrid
Real Madrid hold the record for the most times to have broken the world transfer record (5), having remarkably made all five ground-breaking signings in the past seventeen years; no other club has broken the record this century.
Los Blancos’ first feat came at the pinnacle of the Galacticos era when Florentino Perez had only recently been announced as club president. The club would send shockwaves through the nation, paying out £37 million for Luis Figo in 2000, who played for bitter rivals Barcelona.
Just a year later and Madrid were at it again when they brought in Zinedine Zidane for an incredible £46 million from Juventus. Breaking the world transfer record became second nature for the club from then on, after they brought in Kaka from AC Milan for £56 milllion in 2009 and, perhaps most famously of all, Cristiano Ronaldo for £80 million from Manchester United in the same summer.
The most recent transfer record for the club was the signing of Gareth Bale from Tottenham for an eye-watering £86 million in 2013, which was the most recent record before Paul Pogba’s £89 million move to Old Trafford last summer.
